Posts Tagged ‘Jer’s Novel Writer’

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fun

November 14th, 2006
 

Every once in a while I get a special treat in my mailbox — I will receive a message notifying me that someone has voluntarily paid for Jer’s Novel Writer. (My favorites are when someone with the ability to turn a nice phrase decides to haggle.) In a world of software pirates, there is another sort of person, one who pays for the things that help them for no other reason than it is the right thing to do. I think in general software companies would do a lot better if they used persuasion and value rather than coercion to reduce piracy. I also think people are more willing to pay a company that is recognizably human. I couldn’t change the way I interact with my users even if I wanted to, but I think people respond to it well. I am, quite obviously, just a guy who couldn’t find a word processor that was about writing. (In the intervening years that has changed, and there are a couple of other strong candidates as well.) I have also set up a system where I make people happy by stealing their ideas (‘paying attention to their suggestions’, I call it in official Hut correspondences).

But I digress. (You couldn’t tell it was a digression because I actually started on a course tangential to the point I set out to write. Yes, I’m that talented. But, once more, I digress.) I was enjoying a Saturday breakfast with fuego and MaK, and I began to wonder how much I’ve made so far from JersNW on an hourly basis. It’s impossible to come up with any sort of accurate assessment of how many hours I’ve put into it; there are weeks of furious development with pauses only to sleep, followed by a month without much time invested at all. I did some wild-ass guessing, though, and the numbers came out quite a bit higher than I expected. Its even possible I’ve now earned more than five cents an hour for my efforts, if you don’t count expenses like geek school and caffeinated beverages. If you count tea costs, I have a long, long way to go to break even.

Of course, that hourly rate will continue to climb, which is good, because it takes a lot of juice to run the antigravity generators that keep the Secret Laboratory complex floating in its sky city, the sun glinting off the great glass climate dome, while air cars swirl about, drifting serenely between the clouds over this quiet Prague neighborhood. Plus, anything that buys me a little more time in this life I’ve made for myself, a little more time to build a career as a writer, is welcome. Obviously, though, if it was about money I would not have left my day job. I think one of the reasons people are willing to pay for the software is that they know I’m in for something other than money. You know what that thing is? It’s fun. I enjoy working on the code, making it beautiful inside and out, and I enjoy watching the software evolve and change into something I never imagined at first. I enjoy learning new techniques and delving into new areas of the programming framework. I enjoy writing the dialog box text, and I try to make that fun, too. I think when a creator of anything is having fun, be it a movie or a spacecraft or a computer program, it shows in the product. Stodgy business software isn’t stodgy because the customers demand it be that way, rather because the creators are incapable making it any other way. Software for drones by drones.

Maybe if the big software companies got their own sky cities the resulting increase in morale would show in their products. I wonder how high this thing can go…

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Odds and Ends

November 4th, 2006
What with NaNoWriMo and Jer's Novel Writer, all that's left is little pieces.

The sun has flown south for the winter, and a very pleasant autumn had given way to long dark. There was a dusting of snow on the rooftops yesterday morning, and the temperature was looking upward longingly at freezing. When the landlord came by to collect the rent, he spent a little extra time trying to find out if there was anything I needed. It seems he’s not comfortable with someone who has no complaints. He went out of his way to ask if I was warm enough. It’s fortunate the itchies have mostly cleared up, because it is certainly time to bundle up, but overall I’m quite cozy. No need for the toasty tent yet.

I got my first haggle swag today. It’s a bound galley of a novel by one of the Jer’s Novel Writer faithful. I haven’t started reading it yet, it was waiting on my step as I headed out today. I’m looking forward to it, though. One happy side effect of creating the software is that I have come in contact with a whole bunch of thoughtful and articulate people who love the written word. They are by no means all professionals, but there is a camaraderie that I enjoy immensely. I felt the same thing back when NaNoWriMo was only 1100 people or so (don’t quote me on that number).

On the subject of JersNW, I had a really good day of coding yesterday. I explored a different architecture for part of the database, and the thing clicked into place with ease. I learned a lot while doing it, and the possibilities are really exciting. I just want to tip my hat to the kids at Apple who came up with NSPredicate. (Experienced cocoa programmers are rolling their eyes right now — yeah, big discovery there, Marco Polo — but I could never use the stuff before, because I was trying to maintain compatibility with older versions of MacOS.) Now, things I’ve been dreading coding I can’t wait to get to.

NaNoWriMo. This is by far the most challenging year for me. Not just 50,000 words, but 50,000 publishable words, and the story complete at the end. In other words, a finished product in a month. I have two word counts, one already way up there, the other behind the curve. Finished words take a lot longer. I believe I’ll devote another episode to go into more detail about my NaNoWriMo project, and to share the parts already published.

To my Arky cousin David: if you read this, the Little Café Near Home needs you. The chairs that inspired my thoughts about triangles in architecture are failing. Welds flexed too often are failing, the steel tubing itself is giving up. We need your welding skills stat (what does that actually mean?)! The things just aren’t safe anymore. Bring some triangles.

Right now the TV is on. They’re showing Mr. & Mrs. Smith, with Brad Pitt and that actress with the lips that would be sexy if they didn’t feel so unnatural. Mt. Pitt is a talented actor, but a skill more important than acting is choosing the right script. I was surprised at how much I liked that movie, and knowing the plot already, it’s easy to follow in Czech.There’s a concept that must have been easy to sell: Two super-assassins, and they’re married, completely unaware. Each accepts the other’s cover story. Maybe someday I’ll write something that easy to explain. I’ve come close a couple of times,

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Too many ones, too many zeroes

October 30th, 2006
Because, you know, the Internet is made of pipes.

A couple of days ago the business end of Jer’s Software Hut went down. I got the message “Your bandwidth limit has been exceeded. Please contact your system administrator as soon as possible.” It turns out that for Liverack, my hosting provider, “as soon as possible” translates to “never”, even when you’re trying to give them more money. As I have mentioned elsewhere, I don’t think their hearts are in the business anymore. In the past they had been very responsive, and I wondered how they could have a business that charged so little and maintain that level of service. I guess I got my answer.

Is there a silver lining to this cloud? is my bandwidth limit getting blown more and more quickly an indication of success? Not… so much. While the rest of the Web clamors for Google’s attention, the Goog is loving me to death, downloading several times the entire site’s worth of data each month. This does not include the application download, which is already on another server.

So jerssoftwarehut.com/ will be moving soon, to a server maintained by a Friend of the Hut. I tried to ask Google how I could help them spider the site more efficiently (it costs them also), but got no response. My question was such an outlier on the forum I thought it might get some notice by insiders.

Not being able spend my days combatting spammers on the Jer’s Novel Writer forums, I suddenly had a lot of extra time on my hands. Good timing for it, as I wanted to get a new release up, even if most people won’t hear about it until the hutsite comes back to life. I retired to the Secret Lab, located on an island of stone on a river of magma, drifting through the network of grand, eerily-lit caverns deep beneath this quiet Prague neighborhood, and prepared a release. When all was ready I called to my misshapen assistant, “Raise the software to the server!” “Yes, master!” he called as he shuffled to a giant switch mounted on a stalagmite and threw it in a shower of blue sparks.

We waited.

And waited.

You see, The Hut’s Internet provider also imposes a bandwidth limit. When you reach this limit, the connection continues to work, just very, very, slowly. Remember dialup? I do now.

Too many ones, too many zeroes. The file will be up before you are able to read this.

Come Wednesday all will be well again, and I won’t have the need to do the same large downloads I did this month to get my mini set up. Also I’ll use lower-bitrate Internet radio options. Soon everything will be hunky-dory, and the ones and zeroes shall flow again.

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An exciting time at the hut!

October 24th, 2006
Moving swiftly toward the official November release.

The time before NaNoWriMo is pretty hectic, and all the more so for me. Lots and lots of people out there are searching for software to make their lives easier in the coming months, and people around the world are discovering Jer’s Novel Writer for the first time. What’s cool is that all these new users are discovering the rough edges in the software that regular users have grown accustomed to. It’s all the little things that make a product feel finished and fit, and in the last couple of weeks I’ve gotten a whole bunch of feedback. (Not all from NaNoWriMo folks, there are even professional writers using the program now, and their input even more valuable, as they try to make the software work in their existing processes. Overall, I have managed to attract a fairly passionate user base. Part of it, I think, is that I do all I can to make others feel that they are valued members of the design team, and people like seeing their ideas show up in the product — sometimes the next day.)

So I’ve been doing quite a bit of coding lately, and while none of the improvements have been earth-shattering, when taken in sum they add up to a better user experience. As I sit here in the Hut Treehouse, high in the crown of the teeming tropical rain forest for which this Prague neighborhood is well-known, surrounded by screeching birds and curious monkeys, I am filled with a sense of energy and I’m taking pride in fixing bugs hours after they are first reported.

Of course, that will end with the onset of November, or at least slow down, as we put up the monkey-screens and hunker down to write a novel. One unexpected side effect — from the user registrations I now have a list of a thousand names from all over the world that I can use in my writing. There are some pretty good ones in that list.

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The First Millennium

October 22nd, 2006
Today I issued software key 1000

Other than myself, 999 people (not counting the backlog) have requested keys to turn off the gentle nagging in Jer’s Novel Writer. That’s not a huge deal, as keys are free until release 1.0 (other developers have delivered far less for a 1.0 release — remember Windows 1.0? I didn’t think so — but I want it to be right). But still, out there are 1000 people and counting who have been excited enough about the software to request their very own key.

Key 1000 was, completely without my planning it that way, a haggle. Although you don’t have to pay for a key, you still can, and the key you get will last much longer. That’s cool, but the same price doesn’t work for everyone. I set a very reasonable price for the software, but out there are students and teachers and other folk generally working to make the world better and people like that deserve a break. Rather than make a whole set of proces for different circumstances, I recognized that my market was writers. You want a discount? Tell me why you deserve one. Style counts.

Actually, key 1000 wasn’t so much a haggle as a barter. In exchange for a software key that will last a long, long, time, I get a bound galley of his first novel. No two ways about it, I win. From his emails I know I will like the author’s work. You can just tell that sometimes. Some folks have a way with words. Those are the people who can score a discount on Jer’s Novel Writer.

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Five stars, baby!

October 6th, 2006
Out of five, no less.

Ah, what’s Saturday morning for if not tooting one’s own horn?

There are several sites on the Web specializing in finding all the bazillions of little applications out there to make it easier for the rest of us to find the tool we need. I use these services all the time, whether it’s to find an open-source audio editing program or a GUI interface for CVS. Most of these places allow users to rate the software and comment on it, but a few provide other enhancements, including, in the case of Softpedia, certifications that applications are without malicious code, spyware, and adware. Softpedia also will sometimes write in-depth reviews of programs. Which, of course, is where I come in.

I got a message from them a couple of days ago saying that I had been given the 100% clean award. That was nice and all, but I already knew there was no hidden evil in my program. Not long after that I got the message that the software had been reviewed. The reviewer really, really, liked what he saw. He also articulated something better than I’ve managed to do when explaining JersNW. Most of the features in business-oriented word processors are focussed on what happens to the words after you write them. Few of the features are oriented to helping you get the words written in the first place.

If you really care that much, you can read the review here. My favorite part was the summary:

The Good

Made for writing, with all those options and features that are actually useful to the writing process.

The Bad

The only bad thing about this program is that I haven’t been using it for many years already. The only thing that it is missing is support for multiple versions of a part of the text so that you can rewrite and keep the originals.

You have to like when the “bad” part is a compliment. Five stars out of five. I have no idea how common that rating is at Softpedia, but I’ll take it.

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Programming note

September 28th, 2006
A new category has arrived in the muddleverse.

It occurred to me that Jer’s Software Hut is a pretty big part of my life, and Jer’s Novel Writer is slowly developing into a piece of software that will long be remembered for all the ideas that all the other word processors eventually copied. As such, I have created a new category here at MR&HBI devoted to all the advancements going on in the hut’s secret bunker, chilly and drippy, buried deep beneath the impassible mountain range that passes through this quiet Prague neighborhood. Security measures are extremely tight here (had to boot Dick Cheny a while back; the dude could could not keep his big yap shut), but every once in a while we allow carefully calculated information to leak to what we euphamistically call the ‘outside world’.

I went back and found some episodes that belong in this category, and along the way I was continuously surprised by the close proximity of events that in retrospect seem far apart, and the distantness of things that seem like yesterday. Most of all, I feel the time. It was a long time ago now that I was exploring the small roads of North America. It was a long time ago that I flirted with bartenders in Montana, and watched a thunderstorm on my cousin’s patio on the Fourth of July.

Whoops! Almost did a retrospective episode, there! This is about the future. ‘Rumblings from the Secret Labs’ will be the outlet for carefully controlled propagana concerning all that is good about Hut products. That is all you need to know.

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We have the technology…

September 28th, 2006
I am now computationally over-endowed. Of course, what really matters is what you do with it.

I got the Mini back from the shop yesterday, and now everything is rainbows and unicorns once again. Colorful butterflies flit from flower to flower while the birds sing in four-part harmony. The bunnies are tap-dancing, the foxes are doing the rhumba (you would have expected the fox-trot, but they’re crafty that way), and the squirrels have decided to live another day. Why this great joy among the creatures of the forest? Because future releases of Jer’s Novel Writer will run natively on Intel-based Macs, that’s why. Among mac users, forest creatures were some of the first to adopt the new technology.

Because I’m in a jolly sort of mood, I’ve prepared this exclusive peek into the secret labs high atop Hut Tower, perched on its windswept crag, clad in a permanent cloak of storm clouds while lightning crashes all around it, in a quiet Prague neighborhood.

The Secret Labs high atop Hut Tower

The laptop pictured is, of course, my old one, now serving as a very large hard drive enclosure. The captions are thanks to a program called Cartoon Life that came with the Mini, and makes the layout and typesetting of comic book pages extremely simple.

It will take a bit of getting used to having different machines for different jobs (photos on mini, blog on PowerBook), but I am ready for the challenge. The one fly in the ointment (flies, it seems, do not share the joy of the rest of their fellow creatures), is the uneasy fear that the external hard drive which holds all my music somehow caused the earlier demise of my computer. The drive has a chip set that has been branded “not very good at all”, but I’ve never heard of a firewire device damaging a computer. Still, I most certainly do not want to take the machine in for yet another logic board.

Now, of course, it’s time to move on, to persevere, to take up the mantle once more and leave no thesaurus unplundered. Code must be writ, words must be script, and although the clock in Hut Tower has not had the teremity to tick in an unknown amount of time, elsewhere the laws of space and time reign uncontested, sweeping opportunity along with them in a mad rush to oblivion. I sure don’t want to miss that bus!

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I believe a celebration is in order!

September 3rd, 2006
Watch out, Bill Gates, I'm right behind you.

Today marked a very important development in the life of Jer’s Novel Writer. For the very first time, I got money for it.

I’ve been working on the thing for a long time, now, but I keep thinking of one more thing I have to make better before I can charge for the software. At the urging of several users, however, I have now set up a way for people to pay voluntarily. No sooner had I put the payment option in place than one of those nagging me was all over it, and now he is my first paying customer, and a darn cool guy, to boot.

On the thank-you page on my Web site, I mention that it is people who voluntarily pay for things that are valuable to them that is fueling the small software revolution. This revolution is real, and growing, and is especially vibrant in the Macintosh world. I’ve used plenty of development environments in my day, but the one I use for Jer’s Novel Writer, called Cocoa, takes a different approach than the others, and provides incredibly powerful tools that are built into the Mac operating system. The result is a flexible and powerful environment. Nothing on any other platform that I have used comes close.

There’s another reason Cocoa has fueled a disproportionately large number of small application developers: It’s free for the asking. Were I to try to develop Jers Novel Writer for Windows, I’d be out hundreds, likely thousands of dollars before I even started, just for the basic tools. Then there are all the other bits that don’t come with the tools, that I have to go to third parties for, and then there’s the installer, and then…

Apple has in the past missed some big opportunities to market their innovations. OpenDoc, Publish/Subscribe (more than ten years ago I interviewed for a job with a company that was creating a system that allowed documents to be embedded in other documents, so when one was changed all the subscribers would be updated as well. “Did you know that’s already built into the Apple operating system?” I asked. I didn’t take the job. It was a cool idea, but nobody even knew it was there.) and plenty of other innovations have withered up simply because the big companies that made software didn’t care. Apple’s approach since OS X has been to make their new ideas instantly part of the development environment, so programmers like me have them at their fingertips from the get-go. That seems to be working better.

Now, the big companies are much more about marketing than about innovation. That’s not a bad thing, though, because there are thousands upon thousands of people like me, working away in their pajamas and bunny slippers, unconstrained by corporate demands, to come up with the new stuff. And with modern tools, we can make those ideas work. What you have now are a few giant Word-like programs that try to do everything, and a host of fleet, specialized apps focussed on a very specific niche. Most people have one of those all-in-one tools in the drawer, but also have a growing collection of tools perfect for one specific task.

When I started working on JersNW oh so very long ago, the number of options for creative writing were limited. Now there are many more (for Windows, Linux, Mac, and what-have-you). While I might lose a few users to the others, I can’t help but get excited over the new batch of truly excellent programs, made by people whose primary motivation is to have something that works right for them. There is a tangible purity of vision and a passion for excellence in these products that makes them a joy to compete against.

So I’m feeling pretty good today, not just for myself but for the bazillions of other little guys out there, transforming the way software is done.

Thank you, Heyes, for your support. Thank you Apple, Microsoft, and the rest for making the tools that give us the power to move the world, and thanks to all the other little guys for the competition. Keep those bunny slippers on.

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Programming Note: JersNW featured on a Podcast

August 6th, 2006
Rise of the Pod People

I got a very nice message today from Allison, who runs a podcast over at PodFeet. Tomorrow Jer’s Novel Writer will be mentioned on her show. She wrote me to say that she loved the Read Me file so much she wanted to post links to help people find my novels.

(Note to all the literary agents lurking on the blog — and I know you’re out there. Three words: Pent-up demand.)

Gah! No novels to which she can link. I did send back links to a couple of my favorites in the Piker Archives, and talked a little bit about my Read Me philosophy. It’s a good read me. It has style, passion, and useful information. It is a writer’s read me, and it is perhaps Jer’s Novel Writer’s primary asset. It says a lot of stuff, but what you hear is that “this is going to be fun!”

Really, JersNW will not make writing fun for you if it wasn’t fun already. And if you’re not having fun writing, then there is no reason to continue. You can sweat blood and curse and invent new ways to torture yourself when it’s not coming out right, but at the end of the day, when the words happen and you sit back and smile and wonder how some dork like you could make something so cool, when the crazy string of symbols you built actually means something, and it’s interesting, you gotta smile.

The words returned tonight, once I gave them the chance. Tonight’s effort was more problem-solving than rambling, but when you add a short scene that ties some of the loose bits together and establishes a core moment in the evolution of your character, then it’s time for an internal high-five. You have to celebrate that stuff, ’cause it’s all you have. Luckily, it’s all you want. You’re a writer.

This love, it feels so easy to me, that I assume it is the natural human condition. I have to wonder what we do to people to make writing a chore. Somewhere around the point we teach our kids that they can’t draw we also turn writing into a universe of artists, technicians, and other, swiftly relegate most folks (artists among them) into ‘other’, and spend the rest of their education trying to turn them into technicians. I’ve got nothing against technique (in fact, I’m probably tighter-assed than most) but I will forgive any technical transgression in the name of style. Personal style. “This is me” on the page. There is no grammatical rule that takes precedence over that.

You write to write. You publish so you can let go (doesn’t always work). You make a word processor because there’s an idea burning in your head. You publish the word processor to make money. Still trying to figure out that last bit.

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Code week

August 5th, 2006
It's been productive, but not terribly literate

This week I managed to con some of the suckers convince some of my faithful beta testers to try out a sneak peek version of Jer’s Novel Writer. It worked out very well, as far as moving the software forward is concerned. They found bugs, tested new features, and generally kept feeding me useful information as fast as I could deal with it. As a result, the software is quite a bit better than it was before, and the new features really are useful.

Unfortunately, that hasn’t given me much time for writing, and when I do fire up the novel, I find myself looking at the word processor, not the words. Even using other programs (like this one), my head has been in a really technical place. I’ll be sending the new release out to the unsuspecting masses tomorrow, and after that I’ll be taking a code break. Hopefully that will give me something to write about here.

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Programming Note

March 16th, 2006
Jer's Novel Writer 0.6.0.1 out the door this morning.

On a happier note, I did get a bug fix release of Jer’s Novel Writer out today – and then, inspired by this site, immediately added a feature to my developmental version. It seems typesetters still want italic text to be underlined in the copy, so if you don’t do it the copy editor has to. The copy editor has a limited amount of time, and you want her to spend it on the important stuff, not underlining shit. To save us all some trouble, I added a print feature to replace italics with underlines. Now I have two print style presets defined, one for editors and first readers, and one for copy editors. Hey-presto! In seconds I can go from Times-Roman with italics to courier with underlines, and never have to change the way I have the text set up on the screen (larger, sans-serif). I’m looking forward to needing the copy editor setting.

The rest of the world will have to wait for the next release for the italic-to-underline feature.

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Changing gears

February 19th, 2006
Nothing here that actually qualifies as interesting...

Two days ago I decided to turn my full attention to Novel #2, The Test, setting aside Novel #1 (again), putting short stories on the back burner, and biting the bullet for a major rewrite. There is a lot of Novel #2, and as it stands it’s not terribly well-constructed — although it does have some mighty fine bits. Jane, the protagonist, is a finely-crafted girl, if I do say so myself. The first draft was written without a solid plan, however, and it shows. The plot is intricate, with many overlapping things happening, but the threads are born and fade away rather haphazardly. So, reading over the 600 untamed pages, I came up with a plan of attack.

“This would be a lot easier,” I thought, “if Jer’s Novel Writer could…” and off I went into software design. Now is not the time to be making major upgrades to the software, however. Now is the time to be fixing bugs and getting a good release out, now that hundreds of people are using it anyway. I looked back at the story. Threads. The ability to view the story from different points of view. Those changes sure would make fixing the novel simpler.

Faced with that dilemma, I did what any rational writer/coder would do. I set Novel #2 aside to work on Novel #3 instead. No new JNW features required, just prose that goes beyond storytelling into the realm of literature. Yes, Novel #3 is my Great American Road Novel. I’ve been looking forward to diving in to it for a long time.

While I was in this intensive review process, I had my phone turned off. Some of you may have the impression that I spend my days locked away in my room, writing, never emerging. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Most days I make it to the kitchen and beyond. On this day, however, I declined invitations from Graybeard, from my czech tutor, and from Belladonna. Pretty soon they’re all going to give up on me, and that would suck. So today I’m going to try to not quite spend so much time writing. When I woke I was going to try to go the whole day without writing anything except this, but that was just plain crazy. I am, however, going to try to catch up with people.

As soon as I finish the Las Vegas chapter…

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The episode that wasn’t

November 3rd, 2005
There is an episode I want to write, but I can't.

It’s an interesting story, surely. It has all the elements a good story needs – technology, a baseball bat, beer, and lingerie. But… it belongs elsewhere. So hopefully by providing the previous lurid tease I can leave it behind and get back to the business at hand. And in November, uninformed political raving is replaced by NaNoWriMo as the Single Most Tedious Blog Subject.

So let’s talk about NaNoWriMo, shall we? How many others out there have trained their spelling checkers to recognize this word? Today I haven’t been as prolific (yet), but I still managed to cross 10K here on day three. The story is just plain writing itself. I’m not one of those writers who just rambles on and lets characters surprise them with their behavior (well, if you don’t count the eels); I’ve got plans for these folks. But things are coming together nicely. My biggest concern is that the wisdom of some of the people is showing too early, while they’re just supposed to be caricatures. But that’s a rich man’s problem. There is wisdom.

It is not laugh-a-minute funny, but (if you ask me) it is coming out nicely. It’s that half-smile nudge-nudge funny. I only have to sustain it for 27 more days.

Enough of that. On a less happy note, there are a bazillion NaNoWriMo folks using Jer’s Novel Writer, and there’s a bug. People have lost work. The bug has been lying dormant for a while, but wouldn’t you know it? It’s in the word count feature. Suddenly, in November, people are very, very interested in their word count.

I got a rather irate message from some guy about losing a whole night’s work. It’s bad, and I’m not trying to duck out on folks who have a lot going on, but who the hell uses beta software all night without hitting save once? Maybe because I am often using very dodgy versions of the software I’m more save-conscious, but I’ve been a saver from way back. I just don’t trust these damn machines. You have backed up your work recently, haven’t you?

Happily, earlier today I finally found the problem. I had seen the evidence before, but tonight I turned my thinking ninety degrees and saw the answer. Tomorrow I will release a better version of the software. Meanwhile I’m sure there are posts all over the place warning people away from JNW. I can’t blame them. Once I discovered the problem, I posted warnings myself. Still, there’s a black eye there to overcome.

And finally, as we’re cleaning up the odds and ends, I must tell you that the Non-Stop Snack Bar is really the Herna Snack Bar. It doesn’t say Non-Stop anywhere on it. I’m just so accustomed to associating Herna (casino) with Non-Stop that I never looked twice. I have visited that place again three times, and on none of those occasions was Hanka working. I had hopes for tonight, since the last time I saw her was on a Thursday, but no. Last Thursday, however, was a holiday weekend eve, and Pavel did mention something about coming in on Fridays. Maybe tomorrow…

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One more release to go…

October 25th, 2005
I've made some nice little additions to Jer's Novel Writer lately, but it's time to get back to writing.

I’ve spent the last couple of weeks hammering on the word processor, fixing bugs, improving performance, and adding some of the little things that make good software great. (Along with a dangerous excursion into Photoshop to make less-ugly interface icons.) The number of users is climbing steadily as well; there’s a buzz building which is bringing a bunch of new users. With more users comes more work supporting them, and if I’m not careful I can lose an entire afternoon Takin’ Care of Business.

I haven’t gotten much writing done lately. There’s always a slump for me before November, but this year the tasks around JNW have really grown. Imagine when I start charging money for it. I think my customer service is already far better than that of most companies, but it’s going to be a real challenge to keep that up in the future. Maybe I’ll just overcharge for the software to keep my customer base small.

Even when I do sit to write, my brain is still working in a very technical space. It’s a good zone to be in, and probably why I’ve been able to make so much progress on the software, but it’s not so good for writing or planning novels. It’s time to shift my priorities, and concentrate on the more difficult and risky task of writing good prose.

I got a release out today, and it’s a good one, and I plan to do one more little release with the ability to turn off some of the warnings and alerts. Then its time to put the code on the shelf for a couple of weeks and use the software for its intended purpose.

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